iSCSI Terms

Terms

Ok, some basic terms

target device - the machine which provide disk space to other machines. This is the one where all the disks actually are. It is the target of all the other machines. It is where things physically reside. Note, this can be a cluster, or it can be multiple stand alone machines which provide different block devices. In most of the commands, it is referred to as a portal

portal - name used for the IP address and port of a target device

Initiator - This is a consumer of the disks provided by the target above. These are the machines which actually use the space from the target

target - I THINK this means an actual "export" from the target device. I'll use that term in this document. A target is a specific "share" or "export" that a target device gives out. So, a target device is a physical piece of hardware and a target is a part of the disk sapce on that hardware that is available for use by initiators. Do correct me if I'm wrong in the comments section. Note, this is consistent with the naming convention of iet on Debian.

mapper - Linux has a mapper which allows us to have consistent names across machines for targets on our initiators. This means we can always find an entry in /dev/disk/by-path with a name beginning with 'ip' for each target our initiator knows about.